--ActiveVideo's Edgar Villalpando Provides More Detail in his itvt.com Blog
ActiveVideo Networks (formerly ICTV), a San Jose, Calif.-based company which offers a platform that it bills as intelligently streaming both traditional and Web-based content to digital set-top boxes and Web-connected CE devices and as combining the personalized, dynamic socially connected experience of the Web with the quality, immediacy and remote-control navigation that end-users expect from television (note: the platform, which earlier this year ActiveVideo announced had been deployed by Oceanic Time Warner Cable, and which is also believed to be in the process of being deployed by Cablevision--see article published on itvt.com, June 24th--carries out its heavy-duty processing at the headend, allowing it to work with low-resource legacy set-top boxes that have been equipped with a small-footprint software client), announced Tuesday that it plans to showcase "breakthrough interactive experiences that can be delivered via both next-generation CI+-enabled televisions and existing set-top boxes" when it demonstrates its "cloud-based approach" to interactive TV at the IBC show in Amsterdam next month. (Note: the CI+--or Common Interface Plus--standard, which was developed by the CI+ Forum, whose participants include such CE giants as Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony, is billed as enabling the secure delivery of pay-TV services to digital TV receivers without using a set-top box. However, one drawback of the standard is that CI+ modules lack the interactive capabilities supported by set-top boxes. At the 2008 ANGA Cable Show, Ocean Blue Software and SmarDTV announced that they had developed the world's first CI+ application, paving the way, they claimed, for highly interactive applications to run inside conditional access modules on integrated digital television sets. At this year's show, Dutch interactive TV platform vendor, Avinity Systems, which has since been acquired by ActiveVideo--see the article published on itvt.com, May 26th--and Neotion, a French company best known for its system-on-a-chip MPEG-4 solutions, announced that they had integrated technologies in order to enable advanced applications--such as VOD navigation, rich interactive ads and the ability to access Web video--on TV sets with CI+ capability, without the need for a separate two-way set-top box: see the article published on itvt.com, May 25th.)
According to ActiveVideo, its IBC exhibit (Stand 5.B46) will show how processing in the network "cloud" can significantly increase the interactive capabilities of the new CI+ standard and provide a uniform environment across CI+-supported TV's, set-top boxes and broadband-connected CE devices. It says that the demo will feature "intuitive" VOD menuing, rich navigational mosaics, brand-name channels and other services. It also says that the exhibit will showcase for the first time the full breadth of the combined solutions of ActiveVideo and Avinity Systems. "Service providers and programmers are seeking ways to deliver compelling services to the installed base of set-top boxes, as well as to the CI+ generation of televisions that is now coming to market," ActiveVideo's managing director for Europe, Ronald Brockmann, said in a prepared statement. "ActiveVideo's network-based approach overcomes the limitations of existing STB's and CI+ devices to enable the richness of interactivity and consistent user experience that can engage and monetize viewers."
ActiveVideo, which claims that its cloud-based interactive TV technologies will be in over 5 million homes worldwide by the end of the year, bills them as providing "an engaging experience that combines Web video, Web 2.0 functionality and traditional television." The company says it uses an ultra-thin client in the set-top box or CI+ module to pass user keystrokes from standard remote controls to servers in the network, and that its platform allows viewers to "navigate a completely interactive environment of both linear and broadband programming including rich interfaces and graphics optimized
for TV and remote control navigation; social networking; personal media; niche content; and targeted, actionable advertising."
For a detailed explanation of why ActiveVideo feels its cloud-based approach to interactive TV is of increasing importance now that the CI+ standard is becoming more widely accepted, see the itvt.com blog post by the company's SVP of marketing, Edgar Villalpando, at: http://www.itvt.com/blog/do-you-want-fries-ci-module.
